17
Activity Directions
In Module 01, you submitted a Course Design Pattern in which you identified the weekly learning activities and assessments in your course. You then worked with your instructional design consultant to use that Course Design Pattern to fill in at least two modules in your Course Design Map.
In this learning activity, you will fill in the rest of the Course Design Map. You need to do this now because you will use the Course Design Map to complete several evaluation plans later in this module.
It’s okay if you aren’t exactly sure what you want to do yet for some modules in your course. We expect that revisions will take place throughout the semester. However, at this point in the course design process, we need at least a rough idea of the sequence of all activities and assessments. Please follow the steps below to write your rough draft of the Course Design Map. If you have any questions about how to fill in the Course Design Map, we highly encourage you to work with your instructional design consultant as you begin this task.
Step 01. Review your Course Design Map to see if you have two modules that are completely filled in.
If you want to make additional revisions to the sequence of weekly activities and assessments, please do so before you proceed. As you review these two modules, remember that you can reduce your workload and help students succeed by setting up a consistent sequence of activities in each module. You may also want to review the two completed modules and answer the following questions for each module.
-
- Are module objectives and any related course objectives written?
- Does the module include an introduction to help meet Quality Matters Standards?
- Are the students engaged in a variety of student-to-teacher, student-to-student, and student-to-content interactions?
- Does each activity and assessment have a purpose that is tied to the achievement of the learning objectives?
- Are there multiple feedback opportunities each week to inform students of their progress towards achieving the learning objectives?
- Is the sequence of activities and assessments logical? For example, will grading feedback be received in time to successfully complete the subsequent activity?
- Are the due dates for activities and assessments spread out across the week to encourage spaced study and practice and discourage “cramming”?
- Do the activity and assessment titles clearly communicate the type of activity or assessment, the topic to be studied, or what the students will do?
- Is an average time estimate included for each activity and assessment?
- Is the student workload manageable? Does it meet university guidelines for the number of hours of study per credit hour?
- Is the instructor workload manageable and distributed evenly? Is the instructor workload within the limits established by the teaching workload policies of your department and college?
Once you have refined the sequence of activities and assessments for the two existing modules, you may proceed to the next step. If it’s helpful, view the illustrated step-by-step course design map instructions in a separate tab or window.
Step 02. Please annotate all of the learning activities and assessments in the two completed modules in the course design map.
- Learning activities should be labeled as S-T (student-to-teacher), S-S (student-to-student), or S-C (student-to-content). Note that some activities may have more than one label (e.g., S-T, S-C).
- Assessments should be annotated with the learning objective number(s) that are related to the assessment. The goal is to know which learning objectives are being measured by which assessments. If any of your learning objectives are not covered by an assessment, you may wish to consider modifying an existing assessment to include it or creating a new assessment that will focus on the learning objective.
NOTE: At this point, the two modules will reflect a pattern of activities and assessments that will be repeated in some of the modules of the course. If your course design does not contain repeated activities each week, you will want to work with your instructional design consultant to determine how best to fill out the remaining modules in your Course Design Map.
Step 03. Copy and paste the same sequence of activities and assessments into the remaining modules in your Course Design Map.
If there are any modules that will have a different sequence of activities, revise the pattern of activities to reflect what you want students to do during those weeks. For most modules, you may simply copy what you’ve already got listed in the two completed modules. However, there may be a few modules that will require some revisions. In particular, the first module will include some introductory activities that will make it different from the other modules. Also, the last module may be different, as the last week of the course is often focused on preparation for a final exam or completion of a final project/paper. If you aren’t quite sure yet what you will do during the first and last week of the course, that’s okay. You will be able to work with your instructional design consultant to “fill in the blanks” later. However, you should list any activities that you know for sure that you want to have students complete each week.
Step 04. Write down any other information that you want to include in the Course Design Map.
Step 05. Prepare to review and discuss the Course Design Map in your next meeting with your instructional design consultant.
You will use this document later in the seminar to develop all of the learning activities and assessments in your course. Consequently, you want to make sure that it is as complete as possible at this point. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and we expect that the document will be revised over time. But we want you to have enough detail in the Course Design Map to give you an overall view of what your course will look like at this point.
Step 06. Use the assignment link below to let us know that your Course Design Map is ready to be reviewed.
You do not need to provide a copy of the Course Design Map because we already have access to the Google document in the Course Resources folder. For tracking purposes, please leave a brief note in the assignment submission comments that let us know that your Course Design Map is ready for review. If you have any questions or comments about the Course Design Map, feel free to include them in your assignment submission comments as well.